I’ve always liked Chef Steve Allen’s cooking style – brawny, seasonal, and deeply flavored. The tapas served here at Dish is not strictly Spanish tapas but it is named as such, because it is served in small portions. It’s rather like the chinese dimsum but done western style. The menu currently has more than 35 dishes from 10 categories and Chef Allen updates it whenever there are new seasonal ingredients available.

You have the option of picking the RM99++ per adult, including juices, coffee and tea or if you’re like me, go for the kill and have the alcoholic brunch for RM179++ which includes UNLIMITED tapas and free flow of bubbly, white or red wine and also Tiger beer! Kids between the ages of 6-12 years eat for RM49++ only.

the lovely benedict.. organic eggs no less

One of the big highlights for me, at Dish’s tapas brunch, arrived early during lunch. The eggs benedict.

The eggs benedict is normally 2 poached eggs, ham or bacon, English muffins, and a pitcher of hollandaise sauce (if you can wrestle it away from the kitchen). Ah yes.. Hollandaise, I would like to pour it all over my head and just rub it all over myself. Eggs Benedict is genius. It’s eggs covered in eggs. I mean, come on, that person who came up with it should be the president.

However you can substituted ham for bacon and English muffins for toast. At Dish, toasted bread slathered in butter is used and it’s really heavenly. I love it when the toast gets all soggy from the egg yolk, and that’s the best way to mop up the hollandaise sauce and juices really.. with the toast. I pass back the squeaky clean plate to the waiter. Not a drop of egg in sight.

And the poached eggs here are pretty good too. They have this perfect poached-egg texture – that elusive point at which the white texture is like junket (milk curd) and the yellow approximates egg-yolk fudge. That fudge, a state somewhere between liquid and solid, is to die for in a perfectly poached egg!

turkey ham and mozzarella; mushroom and rosemary; or chicken and red pepper croquettes

Comfort food.. croquettes. Don’t eat too many because they will do to your waist what french fries will do to your hips 😛

more wine.. the sauvignon blanc from marlborough went with every single tapas dish.. it was the perfect match

black Angus beef burgers

I was happy to see the arrival of red meat at the Dish Tapas Brunch. It meant, I was really going to get into the swing of brunch now.

Yes, salads are boring I know, but it must be said that the crab salad bolstered by avocado and mixed in with diced onions and capsicum was a winning combination of tastes and textures. Another star was the cured halibut – an unusual dish but it went so well with the pickled cucumbers and sour cream. The halibut had a pasty texture, was full of flavor and gained interest from the salty and sour contrast between its cured flesh and the cold pickles.

More Angus mini burgers for me..

striploin or ribeye – medium rare, thai calamari

.. and definitely more for fatboybakes!

We had more red meat to appease our carnivorous souls. Then came the thai calamari that rivaled even those served at some of the best spanish restaurants – crunchy nuggets tossed in a sharp, spicy chili sauce. We also enjoyed a fair portion of bloody ribeye that had a smoky chargrilled aroma that was pretty good. I liked the blobs of chargrilled fat that hung off the side of the steak. Tasty as hell!

Chef Steve Allen is one of the chefs I know in KL who likes reinventing his food.. be it Western with and Asian twist, or even good old fashioned favourites like the eggs Benedict, he is the guy to look to for inventive riffs on your favorite dishes. I look forward to his next new spin on classic cuisine and when it arrives, you will read about it here for sure, on this blog!